She told me, “Don’t be scared of all the trouble you see. All your dreams and visions are going to happen for you. Always remember that.”
As she spoke, a warm and loving current spread out from her hand to my leg, gently coursing through my body in waves and rising up and out the top of my head. Through the devastation a path had been washed clear; I knew there was light. And somehow I knew that light was mine and everlasting. Before that moment I hadn’t had any dreams I could remember. I had very few memories either. I certainly had yet to hear a song in my head or have a vision.
From around when I was four years old, after my parents’ divorce, I didn’t see my Nana Reese much. My mother and my father’s families remained locked in conflict, and since I lived with my mother, I was largely cut off from Nana’s life of healing and holy rolling in Harlem. I did later learn that people called Nana Reese a “prophetess.” I also learned that she was not the only healer in my lineage. Beyond all that, I believe a deep faith was awakened in me that day.
I understood on a soul level that no matter what happened to me, or around me, something lived inside me that I could always call on. I had something that would guide me through any storm.
And when the wind blows, and shadows grow close
Don’t be afraid, there’s nothing you can’t face
And should they tell you you’ll never pull through
Don’t hesitate, stand tall and say
I can make it through the rain
—“Through the Rain”
THERE CAN BE MIRACLES
When I was six years old, my mother moved my brother and me into a tiny, nondescript house in Northport, Long Island. It sat sadly atop a stack of long, winding concrete steps.
The dull little structure had a few tiny rooms running along either side of a steep, creaky staircase, which led up to even smaller rooms. My mother was often working or out at night, so Morgan was left to babysit me. He had no skills to look after a little girl. He would leave me alone and go run wild with his teenage friends. One night, while left alone, I was watching a special on 20/20 about children being kidnapped—totally inappropriate for a six-year-old. And it so happened that at that moment, some kids in the neighborhood decided to throw rocks at the window. Their voices broke through the dark night, chanting, “Mariah, we’re gonna get you!” I was terrified by the news, by the kids, by the night, by the house, by my absolute aloneness.
I wanted my brother to love me. I was impressed by his strong energy, but it also scared me. This little house couldn’t possibly bear the weight of all of our pain and fear—especially my brother’s. It was such a raw time. I was a scared little girl, my mother was profoundly heartbroken, and my brother—well, let’s just say he was more than simply an angry teen, especially in high school. He’d outgrown anger by middle school and had graduated to full-on rage. As a young teen, my brother was bursting with creative and athletic promise. But earlier in his life he had been bullied and beat up for having a disability and being a mixed-race kid. The visible difference he wore on his skin always distanced him from the white boys in Long Island and made him a target. Children can be mean, but when ordinary meanness is combined with racism, it takes on a peculiar brutality, one very often sanctioned by (and learned from) adults. My brother most likely caught some hell from the Black kids too. I’m sure his distance from their kind of detectable Blackness, the kind that gets you roughed up by the cops for nothing, stirred up a resentment in them that came out in the form of physical blows and name-calling.
My brother was broken early on, and the only tool he had to defend himself was destruction. He would fight everything, his demons and everybody else, especially our father. The relationship he had with our father was not one that helped him rebuild—instead, it ground him down even further into his inner outrage. A broken man cannot fix his broken boy. My brother was shattered into pieces, scattered to the wind, and our father’s outdated tools of militaristic discipline were inadequate to help him collect himself and prepare him for manhood. The misunderstanding and emotional distance with our father was my brother’s perpetual and crushing agony, and it resulted in his absolute rage.
For most of my childhood I was caught between my brother’s fury and my mother’s sad searching. Rage and despondence are both highly damaging, but, I think, one turns inward and the other turns outward. When they collide, it can be catastrophic. By the time I was in kindergarten, catastrophe was already routine to me. When we lived in Northport, mini explosions erupted between my mother and brother daily. I conditioned myself to be still and wait for the outbursts to pass over. Most of the time I tuned out the words and reasons behind their fights—the “why” was big-people territory. To me, their arguments were just a blur of intense voices at high volume, punctuated by ruthless cursing.
One particular night, however, I distinctly knew the source of the argument: my brother wanted to use my mother’s car, and she wouldn’t let him. Certainly they’d had hundreds of
